J.A. Sutherland's Alexis Carew series

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Seriously, if you're an Honor Harrington fan and you haven't read J.A. Sutherland's Alexis Carew series, what are you doing with your life? And if you're an Alexis Carew fan who hasn't read Honor Harrington, what's wrong with you? 

Or sumfin' 

I mean, the two series are far from identical, but they have a lot in common. The plucky young woman who takes a position of authority in the navy, the career growth, the love interest, a certain willingness to do what  is necessary even if it doesn't -strictly speaking- match up with the exact wording of their orders as given, etc. 

 The thing is, we get to meet Alexis younger and follow her career sooner and that means, potentially at least, more death rides than Honor got to have. We all love that, right? The charge directly into fire, the blasting away, the shooting, the carnage, horror, it all works for those of us who like a particular kind of literature, and it's all here. This is combat in its gritty, horrible detail, and yet...

It's not what you'd expect from a typical work of Space Opera. I mean that. And the reason is because of how the combat and interstellar travel are conducted.

Combat in the Alexis Carew series is closer to that of the Age of Sail than David Weber ever dreamed of for his Honor Harrington series. Stop laughing. I'm serious. When Alexis charges into battle, she's not loading a missile. She's loading a cannon. Granted it's a cannonball coated in Gallenium to decrease the effects of Darkspace (keep reading, I'll get there) but it's a freaking cannon, on a rail that has to be loaded from the muzzle and fired over open sights. When Ms. Midshipwoman Carew goes into her first boarding action, she's not just armed with a flechette pistol, she's carrying a cutlass. Yes, just like pirates used to use. And she's not afraid to use it. She actually does really well with it.

Space travel is so Age of Sail that it hurts. Real space transits are made to Lagrangian points, where the ship transitions to Darkspace. This is where the Age of Sail thing really takes over. It works out that Darkspace is filled with dark matter, which flows and creates "winds" that ships can sail on. It also collects in places and creates dangerous "shoals" that ships can founder on. So it is really close to real life travel on the high seas circa the seventeen and eighteen hundreds. The ships are actually three masted (sticking off the sides and top of the ship one hundred and twenty degrees apart) so you get people actually working the masts. The best of the crew are referred to as "topmen" because they handle the highest sails. Add in the fact that dark matter causes shots to curve and drop like what would happen when firing a normal cannon on planet Earth and if it wasn't for the loss of oxygen and need for suits, you'd never know you weren't in a real world naval battle two hundred years ago. Sutherland did some serious research to write this novel and it shows. I don't know that John Paul Jones could have wrote a more accurate and entertaining account of combat at sea than Sutherland has.

Alexis Carew is not a character for the squeamish or for those of you who will rise up screaming about political correctness and strong female characters. Alexis is a teenage girl with a girl's smaller physical frame and more powerfully displayed emotions. She also starts out stuck on a world where she cannot inherit her grandfather's lands and political power due to her gender. That's why she takes to the stars. She is strong, proud, smart, tough and brave. Her guts get her through when nothing else will. l wanna buy this chick a drink, only I can't because she's too young. Also because she doesn't really exist, but nobody's perfect.

Alexis finds herself in a world where she is doubted by the provincials that she has chosen to protect. She puts them all to shame, not with her words but with her actions. This is a woman that I would gladly follow. She has the grit, the determination and, above all, the intelligence to lead a crew into their duty. That's not to say that she's the nicest person ever. Her job is to fight wars and wars are fought by killing people. It's that she understands her job and that mistakes on her part will cost lives on her side. She is also forced to accept that doing the right thing will sometimes lead to the deaths of her "lads". I won't say she's happy about it, but she doesn't shy away from it. Well, for the most part.

This is a series of books that goes much further toward showing the true costs of war on the people that survive it than anything else I've read. Alexis looks the horrors of war straight in the face...

And blinks.

Hard.

It almost ruins her. She struggles with the guilt of giving the orders she had to give. She feels the weight of every crew member she loses in combat. That's not a small amount, especially for such a young girl. She attempts to balance some of the losses against some of the lives she's saved, but it's not easy. There may be a bottle involved...

It gets ugly.

Let's face it though. War is ugly. What war does to people is ugly. This is a fairly accurate depiction, which means it's going to be ugly. Kudos to Sutherland for the hard work he put into creating a character that acts the way she really would. And no, I don't say that because she's a girl. Men act like this too and it's time we acknowledged the cost. 

There are six books to this series so far and I've read them all. Of course, I would read more but there aren't any more to read and I find myself somewhat vexed by that. Now, it happens that Sutherland had a somewhat rough 2020 (he's err... not the only one by the way) and didn't get any novels completed last year. I'll give him a pass because 2020 was pretty terrible, but still I've subscribed to his newsletter and I keep hoping to see an update about a new novel coming soon. It hasn't happened yet, but I'm confident that it will. The ending of the last novel lead me to believe that more was coming and that's all I'm gonna say about that.

Bottom Line: 5.0 out of 5 Cutlass Blades

Into the Dark/Mutineer/The Little Ships/HMS Nightingale/Privateer, The Queens Pardon
J.A. Sutherland
Self published, Various Years

The Alexis Carew Series is available for purchase at the following link. If you click the link and buy literally anything from Amazon, I get a small percentage of your purchase at no additional cost to you.

Nathan Lowell's The Golden Age of the Solar Clipper

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Listen folks. I have, indeed, been known to wax poetic and speak eloquently (in my mind at least) about works of fiction with major space battles with huge body counts, gigundous missiles and massive blowuptuations that render entire star systems into piles of spare parts. I have praised authors for their talents in describing battles and the bonds of those who fight side by side. Let's face it. I like that stuff. Having said that, there is room in science fiction and fantasy for works that don't center on  violence and it’s practitioners. A world where a peaceable man can do his best to make a buck by honest trading and working his way up the ladder and across the space lanes. A series that takes an honest look at the people who sail the high seas in the real world, only putting the story IN SPACE so we’ll all read it.

Nathan Lowell has written that story. It’s called The Golden Age of the Solar Clipper.  It’s a really awesome series about a guy named Ishmael Wang and his journey from a raw youth just trying to survive to a ship owner (and no, that’s not really a spoiler when the title of the last book is Owner’s Share). It’s a story of personal struggle and sacrifice and love, both between and his ship, a man and space and a man and a woman. 

The series was recommended to me by a good friend with similar tastes in books, but I was still a bit skeptical when I found out that there were really no battles, no derring-do and nothing a hardcore action junkie would expect. It turns out that I was dead wrong to be concerned. There is plenty going on here. It’s just non-violent. Seriously, one of the most important moments in pretty much every book in the series is the first time Ishmael makes coffee. Yeah, I know that sounds lame but it’s true. When the coffee starts brewing, so does the story. Trust me here. It works.

The story is richly woven and surprisingly well rendered. It’s weird how little of this series I was able to predict and how much sense it made. Nothing went quite the way I wanted it to but I was happy with how things turned out. I don’t know if that makes any sense, but it’s true. This series would have gone very differently if I had written it, so maybe it’s a good thing that I didn’t. Lowell finds ways to make things work that make tons of sense after they’ve unfolded. It’s pretty obvious that he spent a lot of time planning and editing to make it all work, but it had to have been worth it for the story to turn out this well. 

Of course, Ishmael isn’t alone in his mad dash (or slow poke) across the stars. He has friends along for the ride and maybe one or two people he just doesn’t seem to get along with. The friends all serve a useful role in the story and the one or two enemies may serve a bigger one. Watching who a man associates with is always useful in telling what kind of person he is, but seeing what he’ll risk himself to oppose may tell you more. Ishmael Wang is the kind of guy I sometimes wish I could be. He does the right thing even when it may technically not be the smart thing. This is one character I can respect.

Ishmael’s first friend is a fellow youngster named Pip. Pip is unstoppable, irrepressible and just a fun dude. He comes from a long line of spacers and knows more about interstellar trade in the  Golden Age series than anyone besides Nathan Lowell, who probably spent a long time thinking “I wonder what Pip would think” while trying to make his universe work. Pip’s ideas are not conventional, but they seem to work and it’s weird how well that mimics some of the things I’ve studied in history classes.

You have to really read the series to get a sense of the character arcs present. Along the way, things move kind of slowly and you never quite notice how much our heroes are changing. But then you finish Owner’s Share, the last book in the series, and reflect and it’s just like “Wow, how did THAT KID do THAT?!?!?!?!” I mean that in a good way though. It makes sense if you followed the story but when you try to consider it all together it’s just like “WHOAH”.

Uh-oh. Lowell quotes famous works of literature throughout the series and I just quoted Joey from the 90s sitcom Blossom. I’m pretty sure he wouldn’t be very proud of me right now. Whatever. I loved that show when I was in the right age bracket for it to be relevant.

At any rate…

The method of space travel as described in the Golden Age series is not at all reminiscent of Trek  or Wars or anything else you’ve read. The term space clipper really does apply here because there are elements of technology that were common during Earth’s Tall Ship Era that are in play while traversing the stars. Throw in a bit of jump technology ala Battletech and you’ve got a pretty close match for how things work. It was fun and the fact that it takes a bit longer to get places than it would in many other franchises works given the internal logic of the setting and also helps set up some things that wouldn’t make sense in other universes. Longer trips provide more opportunity for tension and thus drama and entertainment.

My only complaint really is that Nowell likes to start off each book with a line directly lifted from a literary classic that is no longer subject to copyright. This threw me for the first couple of books, but once I got past the first sentence I was good. Most of the other literary quotes throughout the books are spoken directly by Ishmael (his mother was a literature professor) and make sense, but those were a bit weird. All in all though, if my biggest complaint is about six sentences in a six book series, I suppose I should get over myself. Oh, and if the lack of action has made you feel put off of the series, just trust Lois. And if you don’t know what that means READ THE BOOKS.

Bottom Line: 4.75 out of 5 Precious Cargoes

Quarter Share/Half Share/Full Share/Double Share/Captain’s Share/Owner’s Share

Nathan Lowell

Durandus, various years

The Golden Age of the Solar Clipper books are available at the following link. If you click the link and buy literally anything from Amazon, I get a small percentage of your purchase at no additional cost to you.